How to Grow Asparagus
Learn how to grow Asparagus. Asparagus is a wonderful vegetable to add to your gardens. Not only is fresh garden asparagus taste WAY better than the asparagus from the store, the plant is a perennial, and also very easy going, so you can “plant and forget” and enjoy bountiful asparagus harvests for years to come.
How to Grow Asparagus
Planting asparagus is a wonderful investment for a gardener, though it also requires a lot of patience because you have to wait 2-3 whole years before you can harvest your first full crop.
However, since it is one of very few vegetable perennials, it means your future looks bright –and green- from so much delicious asparagus for years to come.
Once your asparagus is established, you can enjoy these delicious healthy asparagus recipes all spring season.
Growing Asparagus: Position of the Plants:
Growing Asparagus: Propagation:
How to Grow Asparagus: Maintenance:
How to Grow Asparagus: Harvesting:
How to Take Care of Your Asparagus in the Fall Season
There is some maintenance you should do to your asparagus garden bed in the fall season to help with the health of your plants. Asparagus is really easy going, and you can ignore them for the most part. However, if you want an amazing asparagus harvest in the spring, you should take care of your asparagus in the fall.
Here’s how to take care of your asparagus in the fall:
1. Wait until the asparagus turns completely brown.
By fall, your tall asparagus fronds will be flopping all over the place. The temptation will be HUGE to trim them back. However, you must wait until the asparagus plants are brown before you cut them.
If you cut them too soon, you will reduce your next year’s harvest.
2. Cut the asparagus plants to 2 inches above the ground.
Once the asparagus fronds have completely turned brown and brittle, cut them with some good garden shears to about 2 inches above the ground.
Do not put the trimmed off parts into your compost pile (learn how to make compost here). The asparagus beetle eggs overwinter inside the cut stalks, and you don’t want to encourage those pests. So place those asparagus plant trimmings in the trash!
3. Top the cleaned asparagus bed with compost.
It’s always a good idea to give your asparagus a nutrient boost and some new soil to expand and grow in. As the years progress, the soil in those beds gets compacted, so keep it topped off to help your plants out.
4. Then add 4-6 inches of mulch on top of the asparagus beds.
You don’t have to get fancy with your mulch. I use chopped up leaves (which are easily available in my yard during the fall) to make a layer of mulch on my asparagus. You could also use straw, pine needles, or other natural and organic mulches.
Mulching your asparagus plants gives the crowns extra protection from freezing temperatures. I have also found that a good, thick mulch helps keep the weeds down, which is the most challenging part of growing asparagus for me (so many weeds!).
That’s it! Your asparagus plants will then be happy and healthy and ready to give you huge harvests in the upcoming spring. One nice thing about the asparagus beds is that they often don’t turn brown until the first hard frost, so you can wait to clean up the asparagus beds until later in the fall season. That leaves more time for harvesting produce and other fall garden tasks!
- Click here to learn about how to deal with Harvest Overwhelm.
- Click here to read about how to take care of your garden in the fall.
Do YOU have an Asparagus patch in your garden?
**If so, how is it going for you? How long have you been harvesting?
**If not, do you plan on growing them this year? Why or why not?
**Don’t forget to check out these Healthy Asparagus Recipes for kitchen inspiration!
Also check out these seasonal recipes:
Enjoy these Spring Gardening Tips:
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Too late this time but next year , I will wait until the plants are brown before cutting back!